The Internet of Trees

Country living is great!  You can be as disconnected as you want.  However, if you want to be connected, it can be pricey (satellite) or miserably slow (dial-up).

I tried dial-up for a while but websites are too large for it now-a-days.  For example, I remember trying to login to any of my banks and the connection would time-out before I could login.

I tried Hughes Net for a while but it was so restricted (20MB/day!) that I couldn't do much before hitting the limit.

I gave up for some time but then Dish Network purchased Hughes Net and it is the best thing I have had thus far.  I have the top package they offer ($70/15GB/mo).  There is no daily cap thankfully.

The Good:

The speeds are similar to DSL (350K down / 140K up).  While most would consider this awful, relatively speaking; it is functional.

You get an additional 15GB/mo for off hours (2AM-8AM).  Great time for cron jobs!

There are no overage fees.  If you hit your limit(s) you get throttled down to dialup (or worse speeds).  I prefer that to automatically getting charged.

The Bad:

As I said, it is pricey at $70/15GB/mo with a Dish TV bundle.  ($50/10GB/mo - $40/5GB/mo)

If you hit your limit, you can pay an additional $10/1GB but that is steep.

The Ugly:

The biggest problem with satellite internet is the latency.  For example, I get between 700ms and 1s!  This makes anything interactive unusable.  VoIP is also out.  Forget online gaming (not that I really care for it).  VPN can be trying as well.

Summary

So there you have it.  Internet is available in the woods.  You just have to understand the quirks and limitations.  Be careful to not download something huge accidentally.  And make room in the budget.

I plan on writing a series of posts regarding some ways to help with satellite internet soon.